Marco Polo was 17-years-old when he left Venice with his father, Niccolo, and uncle, Matteo in the year 1271.

Together they traveled 5,600 miles to the east to meet Kublai Khan, grandson of Ghengis Khan.

Kublai Khan was Emperor of China, Korea, North India, Persia, Russia and Hungary.

Marco Polo’s father and uncle had met the Kublai Khan on a previous journey and he had requested they bring back 100 teachers of the Holy Christian Faith and a flask of oil from Christ’s empty tomb in Jerusalem.

Because of wars in Europe and the death of Pope Clement IV, only two preaching Dominican friars were sent by the new Pope, Gregory X.

These friars turned back in fear while crossing an area being attacked by Turkish Muslims.

Nevertheless, the Polos returned to China where Marco Polo was employed by Kublai Khan as an envoy for over 20 years.

Finally returning to Italy, Marco Polo was captured during the Battle of Curzola in 1298.

While imprisoned in Genoa, Marco Polo dictated his stories of Persia, China, Mongolia, the Far East and India to a fellow prisoner, Rustichello da Pisa, who wrote them down into what became Medieval Europe’s best-seller, “The Travels of Marco Polo.”

Marco Polo’s book was nicknamed “Il Milione” or One Million Lies, as it described many things unbelievable to Europeans, such as:

Marco Polo surprised Europeans with a report that the Magi, who brought gifts to baby Jesus, were buried in Saveh, a town in Persia (Iran).

Marco Polo stated:

“I believe it was God’s will that we should come back, so that men might know the things that are in the world, since, as we have said in the first chapter of this book, no other man, Christian or Saracen, Mongol or pagan, has explored so much of the world as Messer Marco, son of Messer Niccolo Polo, great and noble citizen of the city of Venice.”

In Genoa, 127 years after Marco Polo’s death, Christopher Columbus was born in 1451.

As Muslim warriors raided caravans along the China Silk Road, land trade routes from Europe to India and China became increasingly dangerous.

All trade finally ended when the Ottoman Muslims conquered Constantinople in 1453.

Columbus grew up hearing stories of the Grand Khan in a strange land on the other side of the world.

Columbus owned a copy of Marco Polo’s book, and wrote numerous personal notes in the margins.

At the age of 41, Christopher Columbus wrote to the King and Queen of Spain in 1492:

“Concerning the lands of India, and a Prince called Gran Khan…

How many times he sent to Rome to seek doctors in our Holy Faith to instruct him and that never had the Holy Father provided them, and thus so many people were lost through lapsing into idolatries…

And Your Highnesses, as Catholic Christians and Princes devoted to the Holy Christian Faith and the propagators thereof, and enemies of the sect of Mahomet and of all idolatries and heresies, resolved to send me, Christopher Columbus, to the said regions of India,

to see the said princes and peoples and lands and the dispositions of them and of all, and the manner in which may be undertaken their conversion to our Holy Faith…”

Columbus continued:

“And ordained that I should not go by land (the usual way) to the Orient, but by the route of the Occident, by which no one to this day knows for sure that anyone has gone.”

On OCTOBER 10, 1492, Columbus wrote in his Journal how his sailors were tired of the long voyage, growing scared, and wanted to turn back:

“Here the people could stand it no longer and complained of the long voyage…but the Admiral…added that it was useless to complain.

He had come to the Indies, and so had to continue until he found them, with the help of Our Lord.”

The Moral Liberal contributing editor, William J. Federer, is the bestselling author of “Backfired: A Nation Born for Religious Tolerance no Longer Tolerates Religion,” and numerous other books. A frequent radio and television guest, his daily American Minute is broadcast nationally via radio, television, and Internet. Check out all of Bill’s books here.

At the present time, in Mongolia, we have 2 american missionary couples that have planted “Rich heart Baptist Church” and this church has sent out native missionaries to begin other churches. We thank the Lord for these two couples. Under their leadership, the New Testament has been translated and printed in the Mongolian language. They are in the process of translating the Old Testament and when completed and printed, the Mongolian people will have the Bible in their language.

President Andrew Jackson appointed Lewis Cass as Secretary of War in 1831, then minister to France in 1836.

He was elected a U.S. Senator from Michigan, 1845-48, 1849-57.

Senator Lewis Cass wrote from Washington, D.C. in 1846:

“God, in His providence, has given us a Book of His revealed will to be with us at the commencement of our career in this life and at its termination;

and to accompany us during all chances and changes of this trying and fitful progress, to control the passions, to enlighten the judgment, to guide the conscience, to teach us what we ought to do here, and what we shall be hereafter.”

Lewis Cass delivered a Eulogy for Secretary of State Daniel Webster, December 14, 1852:

“‘How are the mighty fallen!’ we may yet exclaim, when reft of our great and wisest; but they fall to rise again from death
to life, when such quickening faith in the mercy of God and in the sacrifice of the Redeemer comes to shed upon them its happy influence this side of the grave and beyond it…”

Continuing his Eulogy of Daniel Webster, Lewis Cass stated”

“And beyond all this he died in the faith of the Christian – humble, but hopeful – adding another to the long list of eminent men who have searched the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and have found it to be the word and the will of God.”

Lewis Cass was Secretary of State for President James Buchanan, 1857-1860.

The State of Michigan placed his statue in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall.

“Independent of its connection with human destiny hereafter, the fate of republican government is indissolubly bound up with the fate of the Christian religion,

and a people who reject its holy faith will find themselves the slaves of their own evil passions and of arbitrary power.”

The Moral Liberal contributing editor, William J. Federer, is the bestselling author of “Backfired: A Nation Born for Religious Tolerance no Longer Tolerates Religion,” and numerous other books. A frequent radio and television guest, his daily American Minute is broadcast nationally via radio, television, and Internet. Check out all of Bill’s books here.

The deepness of the Word

There is, today, a move away from the deep endearing knowledge of God and what He wants us to know. We are shallow in knowledge, relationship and living. We can no longer call our selves Christians because we do not pass the test of "Christ like." We want what we want and tend to move through the buffet line of the Bible, picking and choosing our desires. By this we allow our selves to indulge in worldly thought and actions.

We are called to be a separate people, distinct from the world and its practices. Those that call themselves Christians today practice worldly things and are no longer identifiable as Christians.